Devices used in the office at work and in the security of one's own home no longer have a clear separation. Employees bring devices into work, and, in turn, bring work devices home. According to estimates of at least one survey, about fifty percent of more than 3,000 workers among ten different countries operate smart phones for both work and personal use. With technology becoming increasingly personalized and accessible, a global trend is increasing towards a mixed-use world with devices that are work-home devices. As new client devices (e.g., smart phones, netbooks, palm-held digital assistants, etc.) and mobile technologies emerge, client mobility is increasing in popularity and ease, thus, enabling users to move between offices, labs, homes, and access IT environments with a multitude of different devices.
Clear advantages exist with the rapidly growing mixed-use trend of personal and work devices. However, new paths rarely arrive without new challenges. Providing smart phones to employees, for example, allows an urgent response to client requests and a potential competitive advantage over competition. What companies are realizing is that allowing employees with personally owned devices to access corporate email and other resources, increases productivity, while at a same time saving expenses by offloading cost onto the employee. On the other hand, workplace benefits are increased by when smart devices are provided to employees that extend to personal use outside the office.
Regardless of the advantages, imminent risks are present to security without attention to the dangers. For example, many companies are not even aware of the number of mobile devices (e.g., Windows Mobile, Palm, iPhone, Symbian, etc.) accessing their corporate network unauthorized. Adding to such risks, one estimated survey illustrates that in London alone at least 10,000 phones are left in the backs of taxis, every month. In addition, the British Transport Police report that approximately 45 percent of thefts on London's underground train system are of mobile phones. Furthermore, smart phones carrying data plans and other subscription data services are frequently eligible for upgrade at low or no cost. Phones are traded back to the phone companies, upgraded and replaced without attention to where the information travels. The issues raised beg the question: How long does data on smart devices remain at risk after leaving the user's control, either from a loss of the device that houses the data or a transfer of the data to a different location?
At the most basic level, enterprises of today are driven by their information assets. Any entity or person that values information obtained or created has a stake in keeping information in their control. The alternative option, to treat information itself as “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” is innate with risks that are potentially indefinite. Without a clear separation between corporate and personal data worlds with devices brought into the office, employees could easily put company data at risk, even without intending as much. As boundaries between these worlds continue to erode, investments into protecting data are unavoidable. However, as the lines between personal space and corporate space for a user's data are increasingly blending, the distinction can still be important, and thus, ways to seamlessly manage data are valuable.
The above-described deficiencies in the handling of data are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with the state of the art and corresponding benefits of some of the various non-limiting embodiments may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.